Article
Capturing the teen QSR market
Traditional advertising won't necessarily win over savvy segment.
November 24, 2008 by Julie Sturgeon — independent journalist, CEOEditor, Inc.
Teens fuel the restaurant industry with their love for dining out.Despite a perception that teens don't have money to spend, nothing could be further from the truth.
Courting them to stick with your brand, however, requires tactics that go beyond typical marketing methods, from utilizing social networking sites to creating a trendy atmosphere.
According to Philip St. Jacques, chief marketing officer and founding partner of St. Jacques Franchise Brand Marketing, one in three high school seniors now carries a credit card. Teens earn 63 percent of their income independently from their parents, and they generally don't pay rent or utilities.
"This segment still has a lot of discretionary income, even in this economy. They buy basically whatever they want," said Jenn Johnston, senior vice president of brand marketing for NexCen Franchise Management inAtlanta
QSR brands hold the advantage over fast casuals when it comes to snagging these dollars, St. Jacques said, because their focus is all about satisfying an immediate need.
On the other hand, a lot of companies vie for those discretionary dollars — online music and video games in particular. Brady Darvin, senior director of consumer insights at Irvine, Calif.-based marketing consultant firm Strottman, said that QSRs should include the teen market, but skip making it a primary focus of the business.
The good news is, the segment doesn't respond as well to traditional, costly print and broadcasting messages, so the road to reach them is less expensive too.
Here are the experts' suggestions on how to get this audience's attention:
Use the right tools
Teens breathesocial mediachannels, making MySpace and YouTube blatant marketing tools. The problem is, to effectively leverage them, restaurants must let teens — not company executives — control the conversation, St. Jacques warned.
Linda Duke, owner of San Rafael, Calif.-based Duke Marketing, said the point is to interact and entertain more than a hard sell. That can include posting blogs on the sites as long as it avoids anything that comes off as a sales pitch.
And since the sites themselves have no fees, blogging is a cost-effective way to generate brand awareness.
"It's really more about time and effort than it is money," Duke said.
Darvin suggested seeding — and changing often — a secret discount code at the brand's MySpace page. If the viewer comes in on the right day with the correct code, he or she wins free fries or a half-price meal.
Mobile couponing and text messaging are givens to reaching teens. Cell phone users read 94 percent of their text messages, according to YourAreaCode.com, a new advertising company that pushes messages to these devices.
Restaurants can send instant offers to those cell phones, post messages on social networking pages or both. Similar companies offer text messages for as little as 10 cents per phone.
Think outside the box
In store, operators need to jazz up point-of-purchase materials. Pretzel Time's mall bases typically restrict managers from playing music to attract youth, so over the last year, the brand has begun changing its posters instead.
For instance, in the third quarter of 2008, the brand rolled out the tagline "Pretzel Dogs Kick Bun!" with a trailing statement "Taste the Difference When the Pretzel Meets the Dog."
The signage showcases a large image of the restaurant's mascot — something different and irreverent enough to catch a teen's eye.
In the fourth quarter, Pretzel Time is pushing the envelope with slogans like "Back to School Bites!" and signage with lights in positions of the pretzel's salt.
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"This is a first for us in terms of style and attitude,"Johnston
Play to the younger crowd
In Darvin's market research findings, the level of sophistication from today's teens exceeds their age more than it did with the previous generation. That accounts for the teens he watched run their fingers along the window sill and express disgust at the dirt they found.
"Their rooms tend to be a mess, but they do not expect their restaurants to be the same way," he said. "They will not come back if the bathrooms are gross."
Many operators contend teens don't need flat-screen televisions and Wi-Fi to be content. They instead respond to things as basic and inexpensive as special hours. For instance, Wendy's hit a home run with its late-night menu push, in St. Jacques' estimation, because it didn't change the business model.
"They just recognized that teens need a place to show up after a movie or football game when families are at home sleeping," he said. "Essentially, they said, 'This time is for you.'
"What a stroke of genius."
